


We Are the Hunters

by Xairathan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: AU, F/F, Gen, yumikuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:32:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a small village at the edge of the great forests, the local lord's illegitimate daughter, Historia, volunteers as a willing sacrifice to the great beast said to live within the trees. She went fully expecting that her death would buy her village another ten years worth of reprieve from the monster's hunger. She wasn't expecting to meet a girl named Ymir instead. Medieval-ish AU, written for the SnK Kink Meme</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be updated every 3 or 4 days until I finish. The link to the original prompt can be found here: http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/3666.html?thread=6459986#cmt6459986

It's the best choice, really- everyone gets what they want. Lord Reiss gets this stain on his honor wiped from existence. Historia gets to go out in a blaze of... well, gorey is more like it; the term glory doesn't really seem to fit the mental image of being gnashed into small, tiny bits by a large, fanged monster.  
  
Despite all this, the small blonde finds herself shivering, more from fright than from the cold night air nipping at her skin, as she stands before the only path leading from the small village into the dark, forbidding forest. Only the light from the torches of those villagers who have come to see her off (more like see to it that the sacrifice is done properly) flashes through the trees.  
  
Trembling, Historia takes the first step. Her bare feet crunch against the fallen nettle leaves, and the plain cotton dress she's been given for this so-called occasion whispers silently through the low-reaching branches. Another twenty paces, and she's so far gone into the grip of the forest that the light from the village is all but gone.  
  
 _It's for the best_ , Historia thinks to herself as she forces her legs to move forward. In the darkness, she doesn't see the log that protrudes rudely into her path- it connects with her shin, sending her toppling face-first into the cold forest soil. The girl grunts with pain as she pushes herself off the ground, brushing dirt from her limbs. So distracted is she that she doesn't notice the forest has gone quiet- there are no crickets to be heard, and it seems as if even the air itself hardly dares stir.  
  
It's not until Historia exhales, wiggles her arms a little, and turns back to the forest path that she sees the glint of two ominous orbs amidst the brush. Her breath catches in her throat, which is suddenly as dry as the leaves beneath her feet. She takes an unbidden step back- her foot catches again on the log, and with a yelp she falls onto her back. The unseen predator in the bushes takes this as a sign of weakness, and pounces with jaws extended.  
  
Back at home, the gathered villagers hear Historia's frightened screams. Without further ado, the assembled mass of people begin to shuffle off in the direction of their respective homes, muttering quietly to themselves.  
  
Historia screams again as she finds two rows of sharp, slaver-coated teeth just inches from her face. A wash of breath that smells distinctly of blood ripples across her face. Her blue eyes trace the outline of the beast's lupine face and fall upon something that most certainly does not belong on a monster's head: a human hand. Historia's head jerks up and she meets a pair of eyes as brown as the freckled skin around them, eyes who are currently fixated on the giant wolf pinning Historia down. "Easy, Nek," the stranger says.  
  
"Wh-who... who are you?" Historia manages to stammer as the female before her begins to stroke the top of the wolf's head.  
  
"I should be asking you that," replies the other. She crouches down on one knee, still resting her fingers loosely in the wolf's fur, and says, "No one from the village comes here, unless they're hunters." The grey wolf growls seemingly in agreement, and the dark-skinned female laughs. "But Nek here doesn't know what to do with you. You don't smell like blood and gunpowder, and you're too scrawny to be a snack to him. So tell me, kid, what brings you out here?"  
  
"Don't- call me a kid!" Historia squeaks defiantly, though her voice breaks after the first word. "And get this thing off me!"  
  
"Answer the question." The tone of the brown-eyed girl becomes like cold steel in an instant. Nek, the wolf, opens his jaws a fraction of an inch wider, as if responding to his partner's show of hostility.  
  
"I'm here because... because the villagers think if they send someone into the forest every ten years then the great beast in the trees won't come and eat... come and eat our... why are you laughing?!"  
  
Historia watches as both the kneeling woman and the wolf straighten their backs and retreat a step or two to give her room. "You guys are still on about that? After all this time? Good _god_ , you're stupid. Look, the night is young, and there's still some hunting I can get done even if I take you back to the cave with me, so let's get going."  
  
"Going?"  
  
"Well you're not just going to go back to that sad excuse of a civilization and say 'there's no gigantic terrorizing animal in the forest, go back to normal', now can you? Anyways, considering you haven't broken down into a gigantic mass of tears already, I can assume you wanted to come out here. Which means there's either no place for you to go back to, you're a suicidal shit with a death wish."  
  
"Or both," Historia mutters under her breath. Thankfully the other female doesn't catch the offhanded comment, but she purses her lips tightly together as if other words could slip unbidden from her tongue.  
  
"Let's get going already," the hunter snarls. She waves her hand at Historia, who calls after her, "You still haven't told me your name yet!"  
  
"Ymir. Call me Ymir."  
  
"A-and Ymir, uh..." Historia hesitates as she gets warily to her feet and begins picking her way through the dark underbrush, her eyes having more than adjusted to the darkness by now. "Which, ah... which one of you two is the monster that's been... you know, killing our livestock... and destroying barns?"  
  
Both wolf and hunter stop in their tracks. The brown-eyed female turns back to look at her new charge, a smirk written on her lips. "Darling," chortles Ymir, the supposed irony of the term etched on her face, "We're _all_ monsters here."


	2. Chapter 2-1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small note before this section - from now on I'm going to be alternating between calling Historia 'Christa' and 'Historia', based mainly on whose perception is more dominant during the scene. You'll see why later.

Historia follows Ymir and her wolf through the forest, occasionally losing sight of one or even both of them as they slip silently between the trees. Each time this happens, Ymir waits for her with the air of an irritated superior, and every time Historia glances away from the other's hard gaze and murmurs a barely-audible apology.  
  
Eventually the walking becomes too much for the village girl, and she leans upon a tree, moaning something about how tired her legs are, and can they _please_ stop for the night or at least give her directions to the cave? To this, Ymir laughs and rubs Historia's head like she rubs Nek's. "Sorry, kid. You'd get lost before you even left this stump."  
  
What ends up happening is completely embarrassing for Historia, and somewhat infuriating for her guide. After a quick but heated debate between woman and wolf, which Nek wins by pinning his partner down on the ground, Ymir ends up carrying the weary Historia on her back. They large grey wolf trots along beside them, looking self-satisfied: he shows his teeth for what seems to be a good hour after the argument.  
  
"So," Historia says after a while, "can you... talk to him? The wolf?"  
  
Ymir laughs, and Historia feels it bubble up from a deep recess somewhere in the other's body. "Nah, but it's as close to talking as we can get. Nek and I have been friends for so long that we can about each other except the sounds that leave our mouths."  
  
"How'd you two meet?"  
  
"I found Nek around the forest five or so years ago. Raised him from a little cub." One of Ymir's hands leaves Historia's ankles to stroke Nek around the ears.   
  
"Is he your only... uh, friend?"  
  
"Nah, there's two others. Don't worry, though. I've known one about as long as I've known Nek, and the other one and I are pretty well acquainted."  
  
"A-are there any other humans?"  
  
"None."  
  
"Why not?" Ymir's grip tightens around Historia's ankles, and the blonde inhales sharply before she leans forward to press her cheek against the other's shoulder. "Sorry," she mutters for what seems like the hundredth time that night.   
  
"You're the first person that Nek's liked," Ymir says after a while. Historia shivers against her back, and Ymir relaxes her hawk-like grip on her legs.   
  
The rest of the trip to Ymir's cave takes place in the relative silence of the forest. Sometime between the river that spans the length of the forest and the remaining five or so kilometers, Historia falls asleep, much to Ymir's exasperation.   
  
The moon has long since passed overhead when Ymir, Nek, and Historia make it to the cave. Nek pads past his human counterpart and pads over to the far end of the cave, where he proceeds to curl up and begins to doze off.  
  
Ymir lumbers over to a warm, furry mass that fills the other back side of the cave and places Historia there, noting the slight tremors that race down the girl's body. The hunter rolls her eyes again and mutters something about 'civilized bastards and their warm houses' before she scratches at the leather jerkin she wears over an old cloth shirt. The jerkin goes flying in one direction; the shirt, Ymir throws at Historia.  
  
The landing of heavy fabric on her face rouses the sleeping girl. She grabs the proffered shirt, an indignant protest already on her lips, and finds herself struck dumb by the sight in front of her. "Y-Ymir!" she squeaks, voice two octaves higher than before. "Put something on!"  
  
"Not cold," Ymir replies nonchalantly. "Anyways, don't your men walk around the village like this sometimes?"  
  
"B-but it's _indecent_!"  
  
"You looked cold." Ymir shrugs. "I've got some other things I can wear, but if you don't want to be warm I can just-"  
  
Historia grabs at the shirt with both hands, wringing the worn fabric between them as she counters with a hastily-uttered "Never mind!"  
  
"Shut up and go to sleep," orders Ymir. "I'm going hunting." She turns her back on Historia, who continues to watch her new companion through weary eyes. "C'mon, Nek... Nek? Oh, fuck it." Ymir sighs and starts for the exit of the cave before stopping abruptly, as if something's occurred to her. "By the way, shrimp, what's your name?"  
  
"M-my na- call me Christa," answers Historia.   
  
"Christa..." Ymir draws out the name, rolling it around on her tongue before snapping, "Right. Two rules. No fires at night. Don't want those damn villagers seeing us. And no visiting the village, for obvious reasons."  
  
"Not like I'd want to," Historia mutters.  
  
"Then we have an understanding." Ymir vanishes into the forest without another word, the ambiant sounds of the night masking her soft footfalls. HIstoria watches the cave mouth for a full minute before she sighs softly, curls up into a ball, and drapes Ymir's shirt over herself. It's warm, she realizes, probably from the other's body heat, and smells distinctly like crushed pine leaves and smoke and earth. Just as her eyelids slam shut for the second time that night, she registers that smell in her mind as _Ymir's_.  
  
That night, she dreams of mysterious hunters and wolves that chase monsters in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll just post in ~900 word bites from now on.


	3. Chapter 2-2

Ymir returns to the cave, a raccoon over one shoulder and an opossum over the other, and finds Christa sleeping peacefully next to her two more reliable partners- Nek, who is still fast asleep, and a large brown bear by the name of Konig. The bear is awake, and he snuffs curiously at the small human sleeping beside him. "Easy, Konig," soothes Ymir. "She's a guest. Eat this instead." She tosses the raccoon at the bear, who chuffs indignantly at the offering and waddles around Christa, heading for the river and a hearty breakfast of fish. The brown-skinned hunter walks around him, running a weary hand through thick fur as dark as her own hair, and tosses the opossum next to the raccoon, making a mental note to skin them before Nek gets to them.  
  
It's almost nightfall when she wakes to the scent of cooking meat. For a split second Ymir panics, thinking she's been found and captured, before she remembers the small blonde she picked up the night before. A quick look around at the once-cluttered cave shows that Christa's been busy: all of Ymir's clothes have been folded and placed to the side; the grasswoven basket filled with salt stolen from the village sits next to an array of drying strips of meat; Christa herself crouches in the center of the cave, turning more meat over on a slab of shale she's got set up next to a blazing fire. "What the hell?" Ymir finds herself saying.  
  
"You're awake!" Christa exclaims, as if surprised. "I, uh... saw you had some stuff and thought I'd cook it," she offers as explanation in answer to Ymir's glare. When the hunter still says nothing, she rambles on: "I also sort of organized all your stuff but I left your weapons alone where they were since I didn't know what to do with... please don't be mad at me?"  
  
Ymir grunts, barely acknowledging the other girl, who dithers about on the spot before trailing her host to the small pile of clothes on the floor. "Did you fuckin' _wash_ these?" asks Ymir, and she sighs heavily when Christa, her face all but hidden behind her two clenched hands, nods. "The fuck?"  
  
"Did you get those clothes from the village?" Christa asks.  
  
"No shit. Do you really think I've got enough skill in these hands to sew stuff together?" Ymir thrusts her hands, palms up, at Christa who glances down at the rough calluses marring the freckled skin. She reaches out to run her fingers over them gently, and Ymir pulls away, startling the blonde.  
  
"I-I can help with that! I mean, one of the things I had to do was repair clothes, so if you really need me to make you something-"  
  
"What else can you do?"  
  
"Well, uh... back at home I used to clean around, wash clothes, help with the cooking, and-"  
  
"They start you guys young," Ymir remarks casually. To her surprise, she sees Christa shy a bit away from her, muttering something into her hands.  
  
"So!" Christa chirps in an obvious attempt to divert the conversation. "Do you want to eat before you go hunting?"  
  
Ymir shrugs, brushing past the blue-eyed girl to grab at the makeshift pair of tongs that Christa's fashioned out of some young branches. "Make sure the fire's out at sunset," she says, flipping the strips of meat with the tongs. "I'll be back with some game later, hopefully it'll be big, but if Konig tries to eat you I highly advise giving him some of that." Ymir jabs the tongs at the meat drying in the back of the cave.  
  
"K-Konig? Is he another wolf?"  
  
"No," states Ymir. "He's a bear."  
  
"A bear!" Christa's eyes widen, but Ymir's already scooped up a few slabs of meat, grabbed a small pouch made of old animal hide, and taken a knife and a set of bow and arrows from the weapons scattered around the room. The blonde's eyes fall upon a small flintlock pistol, sitting rather innocently by the piled clothing. "Why not use that?" she ventures.  
  
"I've only got powder and shot enough left to fire it two more times. My pa said not to fire it except to put certain miserable bastards out of their misery."  
  
"And where... is your dad right now?"  
  
Ymir sighs, shaking her head, and replies, "Your questions just don't stop coming, do they? Tell you what. You kill your first big game, and I'll tell you everything you want to know."  
  
"Will you teach me?"  
  
"You'll learn." With that enigmatic answer, Ymir tightens her grasp on the weapons in hand, takes a fierce bite of the meat that Christa's cooked, and begins loping down the slope that the cave is settled on.  
  
Historia watches her go, one arm drawn across her chest and the other lightly touching her lips, before she turns back to the fire, looking not at the flickering flames, but at a spare set of weapons lying just beyond them.

**Author's Note:**

> I just noticed these 'chapters' are freakishly short. Like, this one didn't even break 1k words. How unpleasant.


End file.
